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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27090604">say you're in love</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlinaminor/pseuds/owlinaminor'>owlinaminor</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Boys in the Band (2020), The Boys in the Band - Crowley (Broadway 2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Compliant, Developing Relationship, Infidelity, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-09 03:07:42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,666</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27090604</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlinaminor/pseuds/owlinaminor</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>“Hello, Mrs. Bradshaw.  Nice to talk to you again.  Is your husband home?”</p>
</blockquote><p>Three times Larry calls.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hank/Larry (Boys in the Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>89</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>say you're in love</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>yes of course i wrote another hank/larry fic.  thank you to <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabrielgoodman">henri</a> and <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightcalling/pseuds/nightcalling">iris</a> for enabling me.</p>
<p>this can fit in with <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26825674">my other fic for them</a> if you want it to.  and title is from <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/5hffP5gJFe1zByXf7BIeYq?si=a2hA5fmUQFuvVCwH77OdKg">"this guy's in love with you"</a> from the ost, which i listened to on repeat while transcribing.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>i.</strong>
</p>
<p>“Hello, Mrs. Bradshaw.  Nice to talk to you again.  Is your husband home?”</p>
<p>Hank freezes.  The receiver in his hand—picked up, halfway to his ear—takes on weight, expands, begins to tick.  As though it’s his own heart he’s holding, bloody, about to spill loose.</p>
<p>“Henry,” Dagny calls.  “Larry Peters on the phone for you.  You know, from Sarah’s party?”</p>
<p>Oh, he knows.  Knows in his skin, the goosebumps now rising, the hand still clinging to the receiver.  The office phone is a massive, plastic thing, colored bright red when they bought it but now it’s gone burnished, stained from years of scribbling numbers on the back.  He’s embarrassed of it, suddenly, of not having a pad beside it on the desk, of not holding something sleeker.  Who is he, some suburban schoolteacher, who happened to get lucky one night, who had to ride the train with his wife into Connecticut afterwards, who let her head fall onto his shoulder, double-creasing the jacket he threw back on—</p>
<p>God, Dagny.  He still needs to answer her.</p>
<p>“Thank you, I’ll get it,” Hank calls down.  His voice echoes out, down the stairs and into the kitchen.  He hears her replace the downstairs receiver with a heavy <em>click.</em></p>
<p>Time slows.  He feels every muscle in his hand expand and contract as he lifts the receiver, lifts, and holds it to his ear.</p>
<p>“I thought you weren’t supposed to call,” he says.  He sounds breathless, even to himself.  Like he’s gone back to high school, he’s got these big hands and no idea what to do with them.  Embarrassing.</p>
<p>“I wasn’t,” Larry says.  He sounds tinny, faraway on the phone.  Manhattan to New Haven.  But Hank can picture him, or Hank wants to picture him.  Angular face, sharp eyes.  Hands playing with the phone cord, or with his hair.</p>
<p>“Then why,” Hank says.</p>
<p>“I don’t know, okay?”  Larry sounds almost angry at himself, and Hank can see him pouting, maybe pushing his hair off his forehead.  “I don’t know.  I just came home from the bar, and next thing I know I’m dialing you.”</p>
<p>And Hank sees—Larry in a silk shirt, like he was at Sarah’s party, unbuttoned halfway down his chest, laughing and knocking back gin.  Larry coming home—and what’s his apartment like, is it cramped or expansive, does he have clothes littering the floor?  Hank wants to know, suddenly, wants to <em>see—</em>wants to pick up the abandoned clothes and iron them and hold them up to the light.</p>
<p>“Don’t read too much into it, okay?” Larry goes on.  He still sounds angry, but more honest than drunk.  God, Hank hopes he’s right.  “This isn’t one of your math problems, Hank.  But could you—could we—”</p>
<p>“I’ll take the next train,” Hank says.</p>
<p>The words roll out, unencumbered, and then he stares at them, growing heavier there on his desk.  Yes, alright.  He will take the next train.  It is what he wants.</p>
<p>“You don’t have to,” Larry says.</p>
<p>“I do.”</p>
<p>Hank hands up.  His hands shake as he grabs his coat, ties his shoes.  No briefcase—he doesn’t need it.</p>
<p>He’s halfway to the station before he realizes he doesn’t even know the address.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>ii.</strong>
</p>
<p>“Mr. Bradshaw,” the clerk says.  “Phone for you.”</p>
<p>Hank stares at her—pressed suit sharp against the marble panes of the courthouse, and a cordless receiver in her hand.  Dagny is here, the kids are with her parents, and his colleagues know that he’s taking the day off but not <em>why.</em></p>
<p>“He didn’t give his name,” the clerk says, her smile straining at the edges.  “Just said he was your friend, and could I put him through to you?”</p>
<p><em>He didn’t—</em>Hank steps forward.  He tries to contain how his hands are shaking, tries to just take the phone, like this is a normal thing he does every day.</p>
<p>“Hello?”</p>
<p>“Hey, Mr. Bradshaw,” says a familiar drawl.  “How’s the legal battle?”</p>
<p>And immediately, the marble and glass, the clerks, the cold echoing sadness of this place—it all melts away.  Hank goes to the nearest empty corner and presses his back against the wall, just out of self-defense.</p>
<p>“Less a battle, more an endless bureaucracy,” he says.  “Dagny wants to make sure she’s protected.  God knows I can’t fault her for it.”</p>
<p>Larry goes quiet, and Hank can picture him on the other end—in his apartment, maybe, that dingy little place in the East Village, perched in the sunlight of his kitchen, twirling a lock of hair.</p>
<p>“And how are <em>you</em> doing?” Larry says, finally.  “The terrible cuckold, the breaker of vows?”</p>
<p>“I’m fine,” Hank says.</p>
<p>But he must say it too quickly, or too quietly, because Larry says, “No, you’re not.”</p>
<p>Hank sighs, leans his head back against the cold marble.  “No.  But I will be.”</p>
<p>Larry goes quiet again.  And Hank wants to tell him—how he’s getting through the hearing, really, how he looks past the monotone lawyers and the teary eyes of his wife and sees Larry, incandescent at a party, laughing, drink dangling between two nimble fingers, laughing, head on the mattress, curls splayed out, smiling, bathed in sunlight the next morning, one hand curled around a mug of coffee and the other pulling Hank closer.</p>
<p>“Move in with me.”  It sounds ridiculous, even as Hank says it.  An equation he’s trying to prove even as he posits it.</p>
<p>“What, in Connecticut?” Larry says, and Hank can’t quite tell if he’s joking.  Hank wants to see him—see if his eyes are wide, his hands gone still.</p>
<p>“No, I—”  Hank takes a breath, collects himself.  “We can get a brownstone, in Brooklyn.  I start teaching in Crown Heights in September.  It makes sense to be closer to the school.”</p>
<p>“Hank,” Larry says.  And his voice has gone soft, like they’re sitting at the kitchen table together, still half-dreaming.  “Is this a proposal or a balanced equation?”</p>
<p>Hank smiles, hopes Larry can hear it.  “Both.”</p>
<p>Another beat.  And then Larry says, “Come over when you’re done being prosecuted, and we can talk about it.”</p>
<p>“I will.”</p>
<p>Hank hangs up.  He stands there for two more minutes, getting his face back in order, before he goes to return the phone.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>iii.</strong>
</p>
<p>“It’s for you, Hank!”</p>
<p>Larry holds the receiver like a pin on a grenade.  Desperate, determined.  His hair is pushed up off his forehead, his eyes frantic.  Like he’s about to pull the pin, like he’s watching the bomb go off in slow motion even as he throws it.</p>
<p>One of Hank’s professors in college worked on the Manhattan Project.  That’s another kind of bomb, all-encompassing.  You get a special key card, they shuttle you down into the tunnels beneath Columbia, and you scribble abstract equations on brand-new chalkboards.  Loving Larry is like that, Hank thinks sometimes.  An abstract equation.  You give him a few words, parameters, maybe a definition, and he spins them into new dimensions.  The chalk burns down to a nub between his thumb and forefinger.  Change one axiom, and the whole tower comes tumbling down.</p>
<p>That was the thing about the Manhattan Project, Hank’s professor said.  Out west in some expansive desert, his equations were made manifest.  He never got to see them.</p>
<p>Hank picks up the telephone.  His hands are trembling.  He’s had beer, not enough, not enough whiskey.  He wants a chalkboard, and a problem, and a solution he can hold in his hands.</p>
<p>And here is what Larry gives him: new parameters.</p>
<p>“For what it’s worth, I love you.”</p>
<p>Hank wants to slam the phone down, stride over there, push Larry’s curls up out of the way and take Larry’s warm face in his hands.  Skin to skin, everything dissolves.  Equations, definitions, parables, all melting into dust.</p>
<p>Instead: Hank looks at Larry.  Larry’s eyes are going wet, or Hank’s are.  The room is fuzzy around the edges.  Their friends, the <em>straight</em> asshole from Georgetown, the hooker.  It is nice, sometimes, to have an audience.  Makes you braver.  Hank remembers that first hearing in the courthouse, up in front of the judge.  <em>Yes, I cheated on her.  No, I don’t regret it.</em></p>
<p>The thing about equations on a chalkboard is, of course, that they’re meant to model the truth.  Newton feels an apple falling, and he approximates, in variables and in constants, until the sketch takes on dimension.</p>
<p>“I’ll try,” Hank says.</p>
<p>“I will, too.”</p>
<p>Larry hangs up: looks down at his hands.  Still shaking.</p>
<p>Hank thinks about their brownstone in Crown Heights.  The way the sun filters into the bedroom on Sundays, lazy golden, and the breeze in the park, watching it mess with Larry’s hair, watching his hands encircle a cappuccino.  The bookstore on the corner, and the way evening fades in, pink and orange, and Larry pulls the textbook out of Hank’s hands, and says, <em>Dinner?</em></p>
<p>Hank looks at Larry, and then he turns and takes the stairs up to the second floor.  He knows: Larry will follow.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>coda.</strong>
</p>
<p>“What would you have done,” Hank says, “if I hadn’t picked up?”</p>
<p>They’re lying on their backs, Michael’s expensive sheets strewn out at the base of the bed.  Hank reaches over and traces Larry’s cheek, soft in a pool of moonlight.</p>
<p>“What, when I called you downstairs?” Larry asks.</p>
<p>Hank nods.</p>
<p>Larry takes Hank’s hand from his cheek, and holds it steady.  He brings it down, kisses Hank’s palm, his knuckles, the tips of his fingers.</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” Larry says.  “Strode over there and kissed you, maybe.  See how many points <em>that</em> gets in Michael’s stupid game.”</p>
<p>Hank smiles, picturing it.  And then he takes his hand back—uses it to brace himself against the bed, lean in.  Larry tastes like salt, and sweat, and something deeper, like an excavation, like the ash after the bomb goes off.  Something new.</p>
<p>“You know, I’ll always pick up,” Hank says, pressing a kiss to Larry’s cheek.</p>
<p>Larry grins, and leans into it.  “Then I’ll keep calling.”</p>
<p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>nobody tell my homophobic mathematician father about how i'm using math metaphors.</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/owlinaminor">twitter</a> / <a href="https://owlinaminor.tumblr.com/">tumblr</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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